Harrowing hit play back on the boards in new revision

PLAYWRIGHT TONY GUERIN AND THE LARTIGUE THEATRE COMPANY BRING SOLO RUN BACK TO THE STAGE IN A NEW REVISION EMPHASISING FEMALE VIEWPOINT

“Guerin’s play is just right for this moment in Irish history; people are struggling to express their anger with the Church as the last vestige of infallibility crumble.” SO wrote English journalist and former Lebanon hostage John McCarthy after he witnessed playwright Tony Guerin’s Solo Run on its sell-out run at Siamsa Tíre back in 2002.

He encapsulated the moment perfectly as Listowel’s famous Lartigue Theatre Company delivered an outstanding production of the harrowing drama in a play that made waves nationally, one which opened in the Lartigue’s hometown of Listowel on Valentine’s Day of 2002.

It made waves coming as it did, like so many of Tony Guerin’s hard-hitting works, at the forefront of a national conversation about dark deeds buried deep in the Irish psyche.

The dark deed at the heart of Solo Run in question concerned the Church and wider social attitudes to unmarried mothers of the mid 20th Century – the now unimaginably horrific story of how a young girl from the outskirts of Listowel died in childbirth.

Complications had set in during her labour and a local hackney driver was sent for, taking the girl who was in a clearly urgent state into Listowel hospital for emergency treatment.

Incredibly, the door was closed to them, as he then raced into Tralee general where, again, she was refused – while at death’s door.

It is told they then raced for the Killarney Union 20 miles away, by which time the girl had died.

The driver returned with a coffin on the roof of his hackney instead. As damning as that might have been of the lethal hypocrisy of a religious elite that espoused the teachings of Christ – on paper at least – worse was to come.

The Church was barred to the driver as he tried to bring the girl’s coffin in for a Christian burial.

That’s when the ordinary people of Listowel put down one of their finest hours of the era – helping the hackney driver to break down the gates to shoulder the coffin to the altar.

That driver was Tony’s father, and his actions formed the basis for those of the central character of Solo Run, Con Casey – a character riven by weaknesses not shared with the real-life John Guerin.

Now, after 16 years since it first ran to packed houses, the Lartigue is restaging it – under the expert direction of Denis O’Mahony – in a revised version complete with two new female characters.

It runs in St John’s from Thursday, April 5 to Monday, April 9 (7.45pm each night).

“I think it’s a duty of the playwright to side with the persons you think are being wronged, because the wealthy don’t want to know about them,” Tony told The Kerryman this week ahead of the re-staging.

Ensuring that a younger generation would learn of the story and period was among his motivations for revising the drama.

“But I was always conscious that there could have been more female characters in it and so there’s two brand new female roles in it.”

A brilliant Lartigue cast is meanwhile on hand to interpret the revision, rehearsing since November.

John Looney plays Con Casey; Lucille O’Sullivan, his wife, Nora: Con Kirby plays Skip; with Laura Shine Gumbo as undertaker Kate Nolan; Robert Bunyan as Stan; Emer O’Neill as new character Peg and Margaret Murphy as new character Nell, with Mike Moriarty in the role of the Canon.

“I couldn’t be more excited about the play and to see it all happening with the Lartigue and in St John’s again just makes it more wonderful,” Tony said.

For long-standing fans and newcomers, it represents one exceptionally solid night at the theatre, without doubt.

ABOVE: Playwright Tony Guerin back home in Kerry ahead of the staging of his revised version of hit play Solo Run. INSET LEFT: The Lartigue actors at their recent rehearsals for the forthcoming run.